by E. C. Tubb
If did. It filled his veins with acid and rasped his raw nerves with emery cloth. It took every cell and atom of his body and wrenched with red-hot pliers. It proved deep into his brain and vibrated within the marrow of his bones. It was hell.
Blackness came then,, the sweet, doubly-welcome blackness of oblivion and approaching death. He sank into it, gratefully, eagerly, yielding to it as an escape from the obscene torment of physical pain. He sank, then, slowly, reluctantly, something dragged him back and lifted him into the ebbing tides of pain almost top great to bear.
Lasser stared at him with his sunken eyes.-“Take it easy, Curt. You’re going to be alright now.” “What happened?” Curt licked his lips as he recognised the croaking sound as having come from his own throat. He lifted his hands and stared curiously at his trembling fingers. He touched his face and winced as pain flowed from his bruised flesh.
“The metaman got you with a 'para-beam. Wendis was lucky, he managed to smash the thing’s scanning eyes, and got you away from the crowd. We’ve been working on you ever since.”
“Working on me!” Curt shuddered as he dragged his protesting body to ah upright position. “What were you doing, taking me apart?” ->
“No. You were paralysed. We had to give you artificial respiration, massage your heart, keep your blood circulating, and make sure that the brain cells didn’t deteriorate. If we hadn’t been lucky you’d have died for a second time—and this time it would have been for good.”
“But . . . ?” Curt grunted as he eased himself to a more comfortable position. “I’d always thought that a paralysis beam would merely knock a man down, prevent him moving his arms and legs.. In my time it was considered the peace weapon of the future.”
“Peace weapon.” Lasser snorted contemptuously. “I suppose you thought that the voluntary muscles could be isolated and paralysed without harm to the rest of the organism? Well they can’t. The para-beam can Cripple a man, bring him down .and render him helpless, but it is a dangerous thing to use. The heart stops. The lungs cease working, the blood stops circulating, the entire muscular system is numbed and 'Tendered useless. The same thing happens as it does with curare. With luck and quick action it is possible to keep a man alive by artificial means until the paralysis wears off, but it is touch and go. If I hadn’t been here when Wendis brought you in you’d be dead by now.”
“So they meant to kill me.” Curt shuddered. “Why? What harm have I done to them?”
“Isn’t that obvious? You’ve upset the predictions of Co-main. That alone would be cause enough for the Matriarch to order your death, but you’ve done more than that.” “Yes?”
“By winning all that money you have made us independent. Now we don’t have to work on Everest. We can remain together as a unit, and while we can do that we are a continual source of irritation to the government.”
“But isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Perhaps.” Lasser stared thoughtfully out of a window. “I’ll admit that I had some such idea, but now it doesn’t matter. They know about you. They, know just what you look like and I'll bet that they know just how you got here. You’re no longer a secret force operating against the State. You are dangerous, known, and suspect. It can only be a matter of time before you are caught.”
‘‘I see.” Curt didn’t trouble to hide his bitterness. “Ill other words I’ve served my purpose.” He rose from the narrow bunk. “I can take a hint, Lasser. I suppose that I must thank you for saving my life, but twenty million can pay off an awful lot of debts. Shall we call it square?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t want me any more, do you? I’m dangerous you said, and you may be' right, but it doesn’t really matter now. If you’re caught hiding me you and all the colonists will be in trouble. I wouldn’t like that.” He grinned, a tight smile without humour. “Well? What are you waiting for? There is another million you can earn while you’ve got the chance. Why not do it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Lasser stared at the young man, but something in his sunken eyes told Curt that he had read the old man’s thoughts correctly. “You don’t imagine that we would turn you over to the metamen do you?”
“No? Why not? If you did you would be in the clear. Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
“I . . .” The old man licked his thin lips and his sallow cheeks flushed with shame and embarrassment. “You can see how it is, Curt,” he pleaded. “Things are bad enough for us as it is. If they were to find you here . . .” He let his voice trail into silence and stared uncomfortably at the soft carpet on the floor.
“Forget it.” Curt shrugged and turned away from the old doctor. He didn’t hate the old man. He didn’t feel betrayed or robbed, or thrown aside. He was too old for such idealistic' emotions, but at the same time he wished that Lasser hadn’t made it so obvious. Now, more than ever, he felt an outcast, a stranger, unwanted by both friends and enemies. Suddenly he felt terribly alone.
The door jerked open just before he reached it and a man staggered into the room.
“Lasser. They’ve got Carter; Menson too!”
’ “Wendis!” The old man grabbed at the man and glared into his eyes. “What’s happened?”
“We had gone down to the ship yards, trying to buy a space ship, and suddenly the metamen were all around us. I managed to get away, smashed the scanning eyes of two of
them, and ran for the car.” He gulped air and stared around the room. “Where’s Curt? We’ve got to get him away from here.”
“Why?” Curt slammed the door and faced the young miner. “What’s been happening?”
“You remember when I saved you from the metaman?” Curt nodded. “What happened then anyway? I’ve not had a chance to catch up since I left you last night.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Curt. You should have stayed with me.”
“Perhaps. But what happened?”
, “After I got the money back here I bought a car and went' looking for you. We all did. I was the lucky one, I spotted you as you left the restaurant and you know what happened
then. After I brought you back here I found the others and we went to the ship yards. I felt that the quicker we bought a space ship the better. Anyway, while we were down there the metamen jumped us. I don’t know why. Now they’ve got Carter and Menson and you know what that means.”
“They’ll be registered with Comain and the Matriarch will know all about me.” Curt shrugged. “So what?”
“Are you serious?” Wendis stared his amazement. “That is the one thing we want to avoid. At all costs we must keep you in the dark until you’ve had a chance to wreck Comain:” “You’re too late, Wendis,” said Curt quietly. “I’ve just learned that I’m no longer wanted. In fact the quicker I get out of here and give myself up the better.”
"No!”
“Yes. Ask Lasser.”
“Is that true?” Wendis glared at the old man. “Did you tell him that?”
“Not exactly, but what he says makes good sense. He is dangerous to us now, Wendis. If we continue to hide him* we’ll all be in trouble. Comain knows of him now, his picture is spread all over town, and he can’t help us any more.”
“To hell with that. He’s still unregistered. He can still stir things up enough to make the Matriarch wish that she had never brought us back from Mars.”
“He’s too dangerous,” insisted the old man stubbornly. “If the metamen have caught Carter and Menson it must mean that they are after all of us. If Rosslyn is found here it means . trouble.”
“What of it? We can handle those things if they come for us.”
“No, Wendis, we can’t and you know if. Besides, you know the penalty if they catch us. Do you want to be turned into a robot?”
“Of course not.” ,
Lasser shrugged and stared at the carpet, avoiding the young man’s angry eyes. • *
“I know what to do,” said Curt bitterly. “Let me get out of here bef
ore someone gets hurt. I wouldn’t like that.” He stretched his hand towards the door.
“No!” Wendis pushed Curt back into the room. “To hell with all that kind of talk. Damn it, Lasser, we can’t send him out there like this. We owe him too much and it’s our fault that the metamen are after him. What kind of men are we anyway? What if the robots do come? What if the whole damn Matriarchy comes? We’re fighters aren’t we? Well then, let’s fight!”
“Are you insane, Wendis? What chance would we have?” Lasser’s seamed features glistened with sweat.
“Plenty.” The young Asteroid Miner thinned his lips in a tiger-snarl. “Curt wasn’t the only' thing we smuggled from Mars. I brought a few high velocity pistols along too. I had a feeling that they might come in handy and I was right.
They won’t kill the metamen but the slugs can smash then-scanning eyes and blind the devils. Here.”
From beneath his blouse he took a glistening pistol and threw it towards Curt.
“Take it. It carries fifty slugs and each of them will kill a man with hydrostatic shock no matter where you hit. If the metamen come, aim for the scanning eyes.” He stared at the old man. “Do you want one, Lasser?”
“No.”
“Why not? Getting yellow?”
“Killing people won’t get us back to Mars. Fighting will only earn us trouble and plenty of grief. I’m thinking of the others, Wendis, the other five hundred and seventy people who rely on us to get them back home again. What you intend doing is criminal. You have no right to risk everything for the sake of a fanatical whim.”
“So standing by a friend is foolish is it?” Wendis sneered and the pistol in his hand reflected little shimmers of light as he unconsciously aimed it at the old man. “You’re getting old, Lasser. You believe in talk and the nice way of doing things. Nothing wrong with that of course—except that it doesn’t get us anywhere. Unless we stand up for ourselves now we’re sunk, all of us, and the Matriarch will do with us as she wills. No, Lasser. I’ve listened to your kind of logic for too long. If the people had listened to me we’d still be on Mars and to hell with Earth, with Comain and the whole rotten mess.”
“You think stopping a few metamen will get us back home?”
“Perhaps. One thing I do know. I can’t throw in my hand without a struggle. I can’t desert a friend when he needs me most. Right or wrong I stand by Rosslyn, and if you were half the man I thought you were you’d stand by him too.”
“You fool, Wendis. You think that I like doing this?”. Lasser wiped his steaming forehead. “But what else can I do? You know that we haven’t a ghost of a chance to save him. He knows that himself. If we try to do the impossible we’ll all wind up in a penal colony. What is the life of one man compared to hundreds? I’m not thinking of him, Wendis, because I’m thinking of Mars. I’m always thinking of Mars, and I’ll do anything to get us all back there.”
‘‘He’s right, Wendis.” Curt smiled and held out the gun. “Here. Take it—and thanks.”
“You mean it?”
"I mean it."
Wendis hesitated, staring at the outstretched pistol, and his eyes were bitter as he slowly reached for the gun.
“I think that you’re making a mistake,” he said. “I . . .” He paused, his head tilted a little, and the tiger-snarl drew his lips hard against his teeth as he listened to the sounds filtering from the outer. passage.
The heavy tread of metallic feet and the scream of a woman in an extremity of terror.
CHAPTER XVI
For a moment they stood shocked into silence then Lasser sprang to the door, his yellowed features contorted with emotion.
“No!” he gasped. “No!”
“Lasser!” Wendis grabbed at the old man, his fingers slipping off the other’s blouse, then the old doctor had jerked open the door and had run into the passage.
“Stop!” His thin voice almost broke with the intensity of his emotion. “Stop it I say. Rosslyn is . . .” His voice faded into silence and around him flared the vivid blue light of a para-beam.
“Lasser.” Wendis gulped, then jerked back into the room as blue fire sprayed from down the corridor. “Curt! Help me!” Desperately he tugged at the narrow cot, flinging it in front of the open door and building a flimsy barricade of chairs and light furnishings. Curt helped him move a heavy desk. “The para-beam won’t penetrate,” gasped the young
miner. “We can shelter behind this stuff and aim for their scanning eyes.” He gulped as he saw the rigid body of the old doctor. “They’re probably freezing every living thing in sight. They must want you an awful lot to do a thing like that.” >
“Let me give myself up.” Curt shuddered as he remembered the pain of his own experience of the para-beam. “We can’t let them kill all those people.”
“They won’t die,” said Wendis grimly. “The revival squads will be standing by and this is no time to surrender.” He drew back his lips in his tiger-snarl as he squinted. through a crack in the barricade. “It’s about time we had a showdown anyway. Maybe we can send a few of them to hell before they get us.” He grunted and the high velocity pistol in his hand fired with its spiteful explosion.
Numbly Curt crouched behind the flimsy shelter and waited for the metamen to advance.
He stared at them, reflected in the mirror finish of the polished door like figures from some incredible nightmare. Tall, with articulated limbs and a cone-shaped head. The para-beam seemed to emit from an orifice in their chest and the ruby light of their scanning eyes flared like the fires of hell. Unconsciously his finger tightened around the trigger of his weapon and a puff of incandescent vapour sprang from the wall where the tiny slug, moving at a tremendous velocity, expended its energy against the unyielding mass.
He grunted, and settled down to wait for a more vulnerable target.
It had begun with prosthetics, of course. First artificial arms, legs, then kidneys and hearing aids. Artificial lungs and mechanical aids to keep the heart beating. Electronic devices for use of the blind and cunningly-fashioned wires to replace damaged nerves. Metal plates to shield a brain from harm, and metal splints to fasten broken bones.
He wondered when some genius had thought of uniting them all together.
It was logical, of course. Perhaps even too logical. All the old dreams of building a man-like robot had failed because no man had known how to build something compact^ enough to emulate the human brain. They had tried, and they had failed. Comain, the nearest approach to a mechanical brain, occupied ten square miles and used enough power to run a small city. Nothing either electronic or mechanical could even begin to rival a human brain for compactness and efficiency-add so . . .
They had built a mechanical body and used a human brain. Curt shuddered, wondering what they must feel like, those poor devils imprisoned in their unfeeling metal bodies. Perhaps they had volunteered, thinking that the loss of nor-, mal sensation and emotion would be compensated by their potential immortality and extended awareness. They could probably communicate between themselves by radio. They could see by means of the scanning eyes, hear via their diaphragms, even speak by transmitted electrical impulses, but they could never feel. They could never experience physical pleasure or pain. They would never know true emotion, for emotion is controlled by the glands and they had no glands. They were prisoners, trapped in their mobile hells, a few pounds of protoplasm served by machinery instead of by living flesh.
He wondered if they ever wished for death.
Something thrust itself against the barrier, the blue flame of the para-beam bringing a nerve-numbing chill, metal crumbling the flimsy shelter. Wendis snarled, a deep animallike sound low in his throat, and the sound of his pistol mingled with his shouted instructions.
“The eyes, Curt! Aim for the eyes.”
Fire stabbed from the tiny orifice of the high velocity pistol. A stream of slugs driving directly towards the ruby fire in the cone-shaped head. Incandescent vapour flared from the transparent plastic and t
he red glow died in a blue-white gush' of electronic energy.
Abruptly the metaman halted, the blue fire of the para-beam dying with the ruby glow, the metal clashed as its articulated arms fell to its sides. Like an obscene statue of manlike metal it stood in the doorway, and its silent body 'shimmered to the blue fire from its unharmed companions.
It wasn’t dead. Somehow Curt knew that. The all-important brain hadn’t been harmed but, as the cutting of a single wire will immobilise a car, so the smashing of the scanning eyes had rendered the huge body impotent. Somewhere within that metal frame the brain still lived, in darkness and silence, waiting for a mechanic to restore light and awareness. Probably it was experiencing the nearest thing to death that it could ever know.
Again the pistol in his hand spat its lethal stream. Red fire yielded to electronic energy and over the clash of metal Curt could hear Wendis’s fanatical curses. “How do you like the taste of that you damn robot? Come on, blast you! What are you waiting for?” ,
In the abrupt silence Curt could hear the sounds of the thudding metal, fading, dying into distance and silence. Startled he looked at the young miner.
“Have they gone?”
“I don’t know.” Wendis bit his lip and cautiously peered around the edge of the sagging barricade. “They can’t be giving up, the metamen never do, and we’ve only stopped four of them.” He glowered at the silent shapes of metal clogging the doorway. “You stay here, Curt. I’m going to have a look.”
“Be careful,” warned Curt anxiously. “They may have set a trap.”
“Maybe.” Wendis shrugged and moved towards the door. “There’s only one way to find out.” Carefully he slipped past a motionless figure and peered down the passage. “No signs . of anything,” he called softly. “I . . .” The sound of his pistol came simultaneously with a flaring swathe of blue.
“Wendis!” Curt sprang towards the door. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” Pain twisted the young miner’s features as he nursed a limp arm. “The ray brushed me. I threw the thing off aim when I fired.” He groaned, great beads of perspiration standing out against his skin, and Curt felt a quick sympathy with the young man as he began to massage the numb limb. “Any chance of us getting out of here?”